Advice to the President-Elect: Revive the ‘Gang of 14’ … or 20 or More

Barack Obama’s key philosophy and message during the transition has demonstrated just the new kind of politics that rises above partisanship that he promised in his campaign. If he wants to be successful in implementing those themes as president, he might be wise to reflect on the lessons to be learned from the “Gang of 14” compromise over judicial nominations.

He was not part of that compromise at the time back then as a junior freshman senator, just elected less than a year before. I suspect the Barack Obama of today would have been.

A brief reminder for those who forget. On May 25, 2005, in the United States Senate, seven Democrats and seven Republicans came together to fashion a compromise concerning how and whether to allow President Bush’s judicial nominees to receive an up-or-down vote by the U.S. Senate after they had been approved by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. The 14 — quickly deemed the “Gang of…” — were, for the Democrats: Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Joe Lieberman (Conn.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Ken Salazar (Col.); and for the Republicans, Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike DeWine (Ohio), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and John Warner (Va.).

Their “deal” resulted in breaking the filibuster by Senate Democrats, who had 44 senators and one Independent (Vermont’s Bernie Sanders) to block any Senate vote on an unacceptably conservative Bush judicial nominee. With seven Democrats joining 55 Republicans, they would have more than 60 votes to force an up-or-down vote. But the seven Republicans also agreed to oppose Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) threatened use the so-called “nuclear option” — to change Senate rules by a majority vote to require up-or-down votes. But that option would have produced unprecedented partisan warfare in the tradition-bound Senate, leading to even more stalemated government.

In stepped the Gang of 14. Some were liberals, some were moderates, some were conservatives. All believed that the hyper-partisanship and double standards that had led to this stalemate needed to end. Each was willing to offend the ideological purists in his or her respective party.

And what was the “deal”? They agreed in writing that all judicial nominees approved by the Judiciary Committee would receive an up-or-down vote unless there were “extraordinary circumstances.” Each senator trusted the others to define that expression in good faith and as a matter of conscience.

Trust and good faith between members of both parties — the glue that made the deal possible. Two words not heard too often these days in Washington.

The compromise — surprise! — infuriated partisans on both the right and the left. And that’s why it worked and that’s why it was the right thing to do.

This is relevant to the political scene facing the president-elect for several reasons. For one thing, it should help guarantee most, if not all, of President Obama’s judicial nominees an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor if they are approved by the now Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee.

The original Gang of 14 is now down to 10 — with three Republicans no longer in the Senate (Warner, DeWine and Chafee) and one Democrat, Ken Salazar, having just resigned as the president-elect’s nominee for secretary of the Interior. But the four remaining Republicans (McCain, Graham, Snowe and Collins) are enough to prevent a Republican filibuster.

Will there be some Republican senators and conservative talk show hosts who flip-flop and suddenly insist that no Obama judicial nominee who is too liberal has a right to an up-or-down vote? Don’t be shocked if that happens. But I trust that the now “Gang of 10” will increase its numbers based on the same principle of trust and faith, and thus, most if not all of Obama’s nominees will get a Senate vote.

More importantly, the new president can use this example as a model to create a broad center-left and center-right bipartisan governing coalition in both the Senate and the House. To do so, he must do the unthinkable for a majority party controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency: He must consult with Republicans and conservative leaders, not just the Democratic congressional leadership, before he makes his legislative proposals, not after. He must broaden the bipartisan coalition in both houses of Congress so that solutions are developed and legislation is passed not by 51-49 margins, but by 60-40 or greater margins.

Therefore, he must be open to compromise, open to getting less than 100 percent, and, most importantly, ready to take the heat from ideological purists from both sides. He will likely take a lot of heat from some Senate and House Democratic leaders who might prefer to exclude Republicans from the early bargaining tables, just as Democrats were excluded when the Republicans controlled the Congress and George Bush was president.

But Barack Obama has already shown a willingness to break the “gotcha” cycle of partisanship and repeated cycles of do-to-them-what-they-did to us. He has done so repeatedly during the eight weeks since his election in a transition that has to be regarded as one of the most effective and seamless in modern U.S. history.

The new president can make this happen because, in the final analysis, he will say no to the old ways of hyper-partisanship — and “Yes we can” to developing compromises reflecting the views of the broad center between 20-yard lines of this country, where most Americans live, and get into the solutions business, which most Americans want.

I wish him luck and fortitude. He will need both. Based on what I have seen to date, he will have both.

This article was published in The Washington Times on Monday, Jan. 5, 2009.